Plug in to movies that know how you're feeling

The lights go down and, as the film is about to begin, an announcer intones: "Everyone, please take a deep breath so we may begin recording the data."

This movie experience is going to be unlike any other. Select audience members will be monitored for their physiological responses as the plot builds, music swells and emotions come to the fore. These responses are going to actually shape the content of the film.

It was under these unusual circumstances that a group of movie pioneers rolled out the first public viewing of a short suspense film, Unsound, at the Ritz Theatre in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.

Nine audience members were hooked up to electronic sensors - three fingers on one hand and two fingers on the other - to monitor their pulse rate and galvanic skin response. Sure enough, as an elderly woman in the movie discovered what looks to be an intruder in her home, the sensors picked up quickened heartbeats and moisture on the finger tips - a pattern that went on to ebb and flow with the storyline.

The science doesn't stop with monitoring and processing the audience responses, though. Those responses are then used to shape the movie: the music score and even the plot. Thus the film content, even the ending, varies according to the viewers' collective emotional response.

The film debut was presented by the creative and technical partners of Biosuite, a system that allows viewers to interact with film. The project is a unique blend of content, technology and scientific research: a collaboration between Filmtrip, a Belfast media production company; BioControl Systems, a technology firm based in San Francisco; and Sonic Arts Research Center at Queen's University Belfast.

"We all attend movies because we want to experience various emotions - the joy, the sorrow, the anticipation," explained Filmtrip producer Gawain Morrison:

By experimenting with emotional response and making the audience a part of the film, who knows where we could go?

After completing 18 months of initial research, the team decided it was time to bring the digital interface to the viewing public. Morrison and the Biosuite team chose Austin's South By Southwest, an annual amalgamation of film, music and interactive festivals and conferences, to launch their experimental film. The reactions so far? "It's been a whole range of responses," said Morrison, "from 'really cool' and 'crazy' to 'invasive' and 'borg.' "

Ben Knapp of BioControl Systems said preliminary testing has shown that allowing audience reactions to shape film content results in unpredictable outcomes. "Think of the possibility of audience experiences differing from cinema to cinema, even from showing to showing of a film," Knapp said. And as the technology advances he envisions that the movie-going experience might even differ even from individual to individual. The team's next mission is to develop a full-length feature incorporating emotional response, and then possible ventures into gaming or television.

So where is all this leading? As the wired-in audience members in Austin heard at the beginning of Unsound: "We can't read your brain exactly, but we can read your heart."

Now they can drive movies farther into a world of crap! In case anyone is looking for the secret to make a great movie, it's called making a movie because you want to make it. Not, how do we make money?

The development of experimental new media formats isn't always driven by money, but by the same motivation that leads to much of the best content: good old creativity. I love seeing people trying out new forms of audience experience. Emotional response cinema seems like a logical next step.

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